WingNews logo WingNews
top | item 36213626

(no title)

JCWasmx86 | 2 years ago

Would you say buying e.g. a Mac mini for 2.3k€ just to run Asahi Linux is worth it?

discuss

order

stirlo|2 years ago

For €2300 I assume you're looking at an M2 Pro model? Note that neither the M2 or M2 Pro Mac Mini currently have working display outputs[1] so no you should not. Apple changed the way the display outputs work in M2 so they're now dependant on Thunderbolt/DP alt mode support which is not implemented for any Apple silicon machine yet.

On the other hand a cheap M1 Mac Mini would make a great machine to try it out. The M1 Mac Mini is the best supported machine currently.

[1] https://github.com/AsahiLinux/docs/wiki/Feature-Support#m2-d...

macNchz|2 years ago

I don’t run Asahi on anything currently, but I do have two desktop Linux machines, an M1 Macbook, and have previously run Linux on an Intel Mac… I can see the argument for laptops based on battery life/heat/build quality, but for a desktop machine I’d need a lot of convincing to justify the price premium and risk of compatibility issues in choosing a Mac Mini over a SFF/USFF/Tiny desktop with fully supported hardware.

jb1991|2 years ago

I’ve owned both windows and Apple computers, quite many of them, over the last 20 years. On average, the Apple machines last at least twice as long as the windows machines while still being fully usable. One could argue just based on that basic math that they are worth twice the price.

2OEH8eoCRo0|2 years ago

Compared to what? Junk? My w541 is 10 years old and I just ordered parts from Lenovo to perform cosmetic repairs on it.

12345hn6789|2 years ago

If you take care of your devices they will last. - typed out on a gen 1 i7 desktop

jabbany|2 years ago

Unfortunately, Apple machines are usually 4 - 10 times more expensive, making this choice still quite difficult.

kytazo|2 years ago

You can get a used M1 mini for more or less 400€. Get a glimpse of whats going on in your local facebook marketplace, most likely you'll come up with nice offers.

jabbany|2 years ago

I'm guessing that's for a model with 8G memory?

In my experience the experience for those is quite bad, as you're sharing that 8G across both the CPU and GPU...

Judging from the OP's post of 2.3k€, they're probably considering a maxed out version, which has a completely different experience since you can fully take advantage of the high memory bandwidth for hybrid tasks unlike the low-memory models where you're sharing the limited capacity.

jhoechtl|2 years ago

You must be kidding right? Who on earth would sell for 400?

jacquesm|2 years ago

Not the OP but I got a 13" and a larger model Mac of the x86 variety when they were still reasonably young and even though I eventually got all of the bits and pieces to work it usually pays off to wait until a somewhat larger distro supports the hardware as well. That way you benefit from a much larger crowd of testers and once they have no more issues you should be good to go.

Moneywise it was definitely worth it, both machines are still working many years later and have been pretty much trouble free after the initial bugs were ironed out.

If I was in the market for a new laptop right now I'd wait for a bit and then pull the trigger on the latest model with broad support.

slowmotiony|2 years ago

I'd say getting a macbook or a macbook air would be worth it, but rather than spending that much on a mac mini I'd probably get one of those new ryzen mini-PCs like from Beelink or Minisforum. You could get something with a 7735HS 8-core chip, terabytes of diskspace and a shitload of LPDDR5 RAM for 500€ and it's as small as the mac mini.